A Cleaning Schedule

I’ve tried and tried and tried to get some sort of a cleaning schedule down that would work for me, and I had thought it would be easier to do living in a small space. Not true. At all. Turns out, the method was a bad match for my household and our habits, as well as my cleaning style. What does that mean?

I used to split cleaning tasks up by type. One day I’d tidy up, the next I’d dust and vacuum, another day I’d do all the wash, the next I’d wipe all the surfaces… you get the idea. Cleaning by task meant I was ALWAYS cleaning our place, but it never really felt clean because I never was able to get into every room (especially on tidy up days).

I am a massive Anna Saccone fan and have been for a couple years now. Last week I was watching some of her previous YouTube videos and stumbled upon her cleaning routine explanation from 2012. I thought “Eh, what the heck. Maybe she has some good ideas.” Did. She. Ever. Little did I know this video would change my life at home!

For some of you this may be a no-brainer, but she cleans her house by room instead of by task. By room. BY ROOM! This means you’re only cleaning the number of days that correspond the number of rooms you have, or if you group the rooms you’d be cleaning for only a few days!

As you can tell, I’d never thought to do it that way. Most of the people I know, or am related to, tend to clean their homes by task, the way I’d always attempted to clean.

Anna cleans her home in 7 days. She has a hallway and landing, a kitchen, a living room, 3 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms and 2 offices. This “deep cleaning” schedule goes along with the things that need done daily to help with upkeep (i.e. cleaning kitchen counters, wiping up spills, cleaning your cooktop, wiping the bathroom hardware…).

I’ve embedded her video here, or you can click the link a few paragraphs up to head over to her YouTube channel.

After watching this video and realizing this method would mean I spent LESS time cleaning my small apartment, I sorted out how I’d want to clean my home and what days I’d want to do it.

The New Cleaning Routine

Our apartment has 4 rooms and two small hallways. I grouped the hallways with the living room, and will refer to the grouping as “living room” in this post. Okay, so I’ve got: a kitchen/eating space, a living room, a bathroom and a bedroom. That’s FOUR days of cleaning, instead of cleaning all the time!

Monday: Bedroom

Tuesday: Kitchen

Wednesday: Living Room

Thursday: Bathroom

Friday: Free day to go through closets

This way I have the weekends free to spend with Trevor, doing whatever we want instead of cleaning our apartment. Obviously, as our place gets cleaner, I can group rooms, like the bedroom and bathroom, as cleaning the bedroom takes just a few minutes.

I want to show you the change in our home. The photos below are before and afters of our apartment, taken the very first week I tried this method of cleaning.

I’m not sure if the photos illustrate this, but I get a lot more accomplished each day. My home always looks put-together and tidy, which is something I wouldn’t have been able to say for a long time now. I’m so happy I found this old video of Anna’s, and I hope this post has inspired you to re-think your cleaning routine in order to maximize your time. Life is too short to spend it cleaning!